The usual disclaimers apply: we can't pretend to have heard every single new album released in the UK between January 1 and December 31 of 2009, but of those we did, these were the best, and in this precise order.
1. SILENCE IS WILD - FRIDA HYVONEN 2. Fever Ray - Fever Ray 3. Bitte Orca - Dirty Projectors 4. I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose - Bombay Bicycle Club 5. Thunderheist - Thunderheist 6. Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear 7. The xx - The xx 8. Union - The Boxer Rebellion 9. Bird-Brains - Tune-Yards 10. It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs 11. Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do - Major Lazer 12. 'Em Are I - Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard 13. See Mystery Lights - YACHT 14. Logos - Atlas Sound 15. If You Were Fruit - The Lovely Eggs 16. Farm - Dinosaur Jr 17. Hospice - The Antlers 18. Post-Apocalyptic Love - The Very Sexuals 19. My Maudlin Career - Camera Obscura 20. Still Night Still Light - Au Revoir Simone 21. Blue Roses - Blue Roses 22. The Floodlight Collective - Lotus Plaza 23. Tear Ourselves Away - LoveLikeFire 24. Get Guilty - AC Newman 25. Face Control - Handsome Furs 26. Varshons - The Lemonheads 27. A Man, A Woman Walked By - PJ Harvey and John Parish 28. Survival Strategies In A Modern World - Liechtenstein 29. Me Oh My - Cate Le Bon 30. I'm Going Away - The Fiery Furnaces 31. Embryonic - The Flaming Lips 32. I Feel Cream - Peaches 33. Dance Mother - Telepathe 34. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart 35. Julian Plenti is...Skyscraper - Julian Plenti 36. II - Desire 37. Fight Like Apes And The Mysteries Of The Golden Medallion - Fight Like Apes 38. Polly Scattergood - Polly Scattergood 39. Fine Fascination - Red Light Company 40. Fantasies - Metric
Use the comments box for any gripes, observations and linklove for your own year-end lists. Happy New Year to all our readers, hopefully this site will be slightly more active in 2010!
Ick. Should have been at an indiepop all-dayer but spent all day suspended upside down in a huge vat of Lemsip* instead. Talking of all things medicinal, in case you haven't noticed former PV blogroller Dr Brooke Magnanti has outed herself as Belle de Jour.
During the media storm in the early years of BDJ your bemused blogger was often emailed asking for an opinion on her true identity. In truth, I didn't know for sure, but I did once give a clue to check which blog first linked to BDJ and where they got their lead. The first blog to link to BDJ was in fact this humble blog, Parallax View. And the lead? An email from a fellow blogger casually asking whether I'd noticed on the UK Blogs aggregator a blog by a prostitute. The blogger? Oh, you're ahead of me...Dr Brooke Magnanti.
See? Sometimes Dead Kenny does know how to keep his gob shut (well, just about). Who knew?
Indietracks Festival, Midland Butterly Railway nr. Ripley, Derbyshire, July 24-26 2009.
This was Parallax View's first visit to Indietracks, now in its third year of bringing the best of indiepop to the grounds of a vintage railway station at Midland Railway, Butterly, near Ripley in Derbyshire. It was a sign of the weekend to come that the person we end up sharing a taxi with from Alfreton train station was Ian who runs the How Does If Feel To Be Loved? disco in the marquee at the event. Everything, and indeed, everyone, seemed to be connected.
Even, to some degree, our good selves, as we make re-acquaintance with Dunc from The Autumn Store and badge-bestowing Simon of Sweeping The Nation fame in fairly quick order on entering the grounds, and bump into Liz from The School not long after. And who should we be following on our way to the bar but the unmistakeable derrieres of the girls from Au Revoir Simone? It was very much that kind of festival.
Friday night's fare was entirely on the outdoor stage, with the synths of Modular washing over us pleasantly before Rosay Pipette (hitherto to be referred to, of course, as Rose Elinor Dougall) strutted her new solo stuff to mostly impressive effect. There wasn't too much on show that screamed out 'hit record' but it was all engaging enough to foster the belief that if anyone can sell Stereolab-lite to the masses it's RED.
While waiting for ARS to get into gear, we managed to catch a few words with Alice Hubley from Arthur and Martha as she chatted to Dunc, consoling her on the rather snide NME review of A&M's new album which was excessively sniping with regards to her own vocal contributions. Heads turned immediately with the arrival of Au Revoir Simone, who put on a confident and mesmering show featuring the best from their three albums. There are those that bemoan their lack of stagecraft but with presence like theirs craft is made redundant and superflous, and latest album 'Still Night, Still Light' is arguably their most consistent disc to date.
Thus followed some dancing with Dunc, his gf Debbie, and the rest of the Autumn Store posse in the Lipstick On Your Collar! disco, during which Dead Kenny may or may not have been jumping up and down rather rigorously to The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's 'Young Adult Friction' chanting 'don't check me out! don't check me out!' to anyone without an option but to listen. All in all, was a Good Friday, if not THE Good Friday, if you see what we mean.
Saturday sees our bleary blogging eyes facing the serious business of catching as many indiepop acts as possible while still remembering to cover the basics of eating, drinking and breathing. We catch the sun somewhat while waiting for Sucrette, who make up for their late appearance with some top-notch breathy J-Pop which would appeal in particular to fans of Annie's 'Anniemal'. We were less seduced by Tender Trap, whose harmonies only really tugged at our heartstrings during their newest number, but at least that means they're heading in the right direction. Also failed to be engaged by Friends on the Indoor Stage (otherwise known as The Loco Shed), while One Happy Island won us over with the sheer persistence of their energy and charm during their set in the same arena.
Danish troubadour Labrador was late finding the festival but provided soothing electro-folk to calm our savage breasts on a hot Saturday evening in The Church (a case of Pew! What A Scorcher! anyone?). This proved the calm before the storm of The Specific Heats at the same location, whose reverb mechanism blew up during the first song, amongst other technical mishaps, which did nothing but add to the feeling that this was one of the festival landmark events, with scorching surf guitar and sun-kissed melodies providing a perversely devilish good time in the 'sanctity' of The Church.
Some fresh air was certainly needed at that point, but a look at the long snaking queue of people waiting to see The Lovely Eggs suggested that we wouldn't be able to get back in a hurry. And so it proved, as we were left to paw at the Church window like poor little orphan boys on Christmas Day, to get a glimpse of the hotly-tipped popsters. From our disadvantaged vantage point, The Lovely Eggs looked and sounded un-beatable, before we whisked ourselves off to see The Frank And Walters, who were still playing mostly the same songs and (if memory serves us correctly) telling mostly the same jokes that they used to back in 1992. Pretty entertaining and endearing stuff, nevertheless.
We only really know one Speedmarket Avenue song, the pretty fantastic 'Way Better Now' so wasn't quite sure what to expect of the Stockholm collective. Perhaps the most surprising aspect was that the vocal duties were fairly evenly shared between the male and female singer, the latter's sheer blue tights certainly scorching themselves on our retinas. It was all rather lovely, much lovelier than the fact that the main toilets were in need of plumbing attention, which certainly challenged punters' temperaments in what was supposed to be the friendliest of festivals.
Our underpants tension was somewhat eased by the always comforting presence of Camera Obscura, with lead singer Tracyann Campbell looking never more glam as the band dispensed a crowd-pleasing set of gems like 'Let's Get Out Of This Country'; 'French Navy' and 'If Looks Could Kill', climaxing beautifully as usual with 'Razzle Dazzle Rose' as the sun set. Met back up with Dunc and Debbie at this stage who pass on the tidbit that Marisa from The Besties is about to do a debut solo set in the Marquee. Right on cue the lead singer from The Specific Heats then pops his head out of said tent and hollers to anything within earshot the very same headline news.
Although your bluffing blogger is aware of The Besties' cult status in indiepop circles, Marisa seems more recently and vividly familiar to us, until it clicks she played keys for The Specific Heats earlier. We just have time to congratulate The Specific Heats singer on his set (he's philosophical about the equipment blowing up as it's the last day of their European tour) before he was required to act as a human mic stand for the slightly embarrassed but genuinely endearing Marisa, who ran through some old Besties tunes and other stuff even though at least one of her keys wasn't working. The whole shebang had so much impromptu charm and bonhomie we swear if we were any more full of ourselves at this point we'd have had to empty ourselves out just for the pleasure of filling ourselves back up again.
This also served to fill the gap while (reputedly) Emmy The Great had to be rescued from some sort of motorway-related fiasco before her set at The Indoor Stage. Better late than never, as we always say here on Parallax View, and while we can't quite re-create the flush of love at first sight we initially felt for Emmy, it's a bold and entertaining show with an impressive cover of The Pixies' 'Where Is My Mind?' thrown into the mix for good measure. Outside, La Casa Azul are in turns bemusing and bewitching with an undeniably odd combination of pigeon English, dancepop and balladry, to a visual backdrop of Mario Brothers, 'virtual backing band' and other random bytes and bobs. It's hit and miss for our tastes, but there's no doubt his version of John Paul Young's 'Love Is In The Air' provides one of the truly joyously unifying moments of the festival weekend.
Night-time saw Ian's 'How Does It Feel To be Loved?' pop-disco ramming the Marquee to its rafters, so we had our hearts and feet stolen by Barcelona's Bonnie & Clyde in the Loco Shed instead. TPOBPAH's 'Young Adult Friction' again gets a showing, and thus also does our crap dancing in a session of hot, sweaty fun. Rumours of ex-NME journo Tim Jonze being on site to do a piece for The Guardian permeated the night air as the contented crowds dispersed.
Sunday morning started with a call from our friend Keef to say he's coming up for the day to catch up with the evening's headliners Teenage Fanclub. After watching the entrancing (but startlingly young) Bonne Idee in the Loco Shed, we meet up with Keef on the steam train where we're completely out of earshot of the drum-and-bass from The Manhattan Love Suicides announcing the band's split. We're back on solid ground in time for The School's afternoon slot on The Outdoor Stage, where Simon from The Loves does his best to steal the show from a stunning set of stellar choons new and old, with his drunken wit and repartee and blatant-lack-of-socks appeal, but it's the impression of a band truly starting to find its feet live that's the lingering impression.
It then began to rain, which probably suited Denmark's Northern Portrait as their efficient Scandinavian remodelling of The Smiths would suggest they're more than comfortable with all things Northern Miserabilism. Happily they're not short of decent tunes and the material seems grounded and heartfelt enough to resonate more deeply than mere pastiche, and they appeared to go down well with a visibly impressed Emma from Pocketbooks who was stood next to us throughout. We wished her well with her set later that day, to which she summarily dismissed us to the merchandise stand. Still, as Confucious might have said, better a girl who only brings her business head to the party than one who doesn't bring any head at all.
Was well and truly chucking it down by this time, but it didn't stop us from heading to see Lucky Soul on the Outdoor Stage to gawp at the singer in her short little mini-dress and to remark on how one of the LS geezers is indecently rocking the Blake Fielder-Civil look, as well as sway about a bit and tap our feet to their pretty fetching pop-soul sound. Meanwhile, it wasn't just the rain that saw people scampering into the merchandise tent, as there was a bit of a Talulah Gosh reunion going on, which was nice, even though we found ourselves distracted by congratulating Liz on her set and introducing Dunc and Simon to each other (the indiepop equivalent of Frost:Nixon, we're sure you'll agree).
Sunday became a bit of a rainy blur from this point on, catching 20 minutes of the always-entertaining The Smittens here and 20 minutes of Hong Kong In The 60s ambient pop there, and a set by the aforementioned Pocketbooks that became increasingly compelling as the show went on, and we're sure Emma (who sports a haircut that makes her look a bit like Helen Marnie from Ladytron) would thank us for pointing out that their excellent album 'Flight Paths' is available for retail and download from all the usual outlets, now.
What else? Ah yes, Stereo Total were something of a rowdy revelation, featuring an impromptu performance from Birmingham's very own David Leach on harmonising, and a vaguely riotous stage invasion providing a feelgood finale. One-man NZ act Disasteradio gurned his way gloriously through a frenetic set of electronic gloopy loopiness, keeping Keef's son Joe suitably fascinated throughout. Some fishcake and chips in Johnson's Cafe later, Art Brut are their usual entertaining selves, even though their rockstar shapes and boisterous, slightly shambolic wit does lose its novelty value after a while. Nice of them to namecheck MJ Hibbett, though.
Which just left us with the minor details of your hustling hack falling flat on his back on the wet grass and a mighty, mighty closing performance from Teenage Fanclub which included a couple of new songs (one was called 'The Falls', we think) and plenty of the best from what we sometimes forget is a splendidly impressive back catalogue. Not only is everything and everybody connected, but, as TFC remind us to a cavalcade of chiming guitars, Everything Flows.
Here lies Parallax View's pick of the best albums released for the first time in the UK in the first six months of the year. While we can't pretend to have heard all of the qualifying records (in particular, we resisted The Horrors, because we can't bear to have to say anything nice about them), of those we did, these were the best, and in this precise order.
1. SILENCE IS WILD - FRIDA HYVONEN 2. Fever Ray - Fever Ray 3. Bitte Orca - The Dirty Projectors 4. Thunderheist - Thunderheist 5. Union - The Boxer Rebellion 6. Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do - Major Lazer 7. Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear 8. The Floodlight Collective - Lotus Plaza 9. Em Are I - Jeffrey Lewis And The Junkyard 10. Get Guilty - AC Newman 11. Face Control - Handsome Furs 12. It's Blitz! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs 13. Farm - Dinosaur Jr 14. Tear Ourselves Away - LoveLikeFire 15. My Maudlin Career - Camera Obscura 16. Post-Apocalyptic Love - The Very Sexuals 17. I Feel Cream - Peaches 18. A Man, A Woman Walked By - PJ Harvey & John Parish 19. Still Night, Still Light - Au Revoir Simone 20. Fantasies - Metric
Records by Experimental Dental School, The Lemonheads, Red Light Company, The Wind Whistles, Telepathe, Polly Scattergood and The Joy Formidable narrowly missed out but are all also worth exploring.
The Autumn Store Presents: Moofish Catfish/Waldo Jeffers/MJ Hibbert and the Validators, The Autumn Store, Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham, Saturday June 13 2009, 9pm. The Thermals, 02 Academy 3, Birmingham, Monday June 22nd, 9.30pm. The Warlocks/Wild Palms/Guile, The Rainbow, Digbeth, Birmingham, Sunday July 19 2009,8pm.
You'd have to be nuts to miss an Autumn Store gathering, even though we've contrived to do just that more than we'd like, but the lure of catching some Moofish Catfish at the beginning of their UK tour proved strong enough bait on this occasion. Like a slightly poppier Liechtenstein, but with enough pirhana bite in the guitars to supply a crunchy base to their witty lyrics and soaring harmonies, they were a real find so catch 'em if you can. Also on the bill were local band Waldo Jeffers, whose set was a mixed bag, but the singer has a distinctive, velvety voice, and if they can fix a matching musical voice in terms of a distinct direction they certainly have plenty potential. Headlining were London's MJ Hibbert And The Validators, whose wry, lo-fi take on modern pop culture provided a ramshackle but undeniably entertaining climax to the evening's entertainment.
Over at The Rainbow there was more overtly serious fare where The Warlocks were headlining on a recently-redesigned stage area to a black-clad crowd. Bobby Hensher and crew haven't exactly developed their sound as much as refined it: we came for a driven set of powerful, transcendent guitars, that's what we got, and we loved it. Not that everybody was as transfixed, however: some punter with a hot girlfriend is twittering 'The left guitar[sic] looks like a right miserable git'. Sheesh, everyone's a critic these days, right?
Of the supports, we continue to be impressed by Guile, despite them having to fight against the apathy from some of the early birds in the crowd, while London's Wild Palms provided some sharp relief from the storm und drang with their relatively chirpy, choppy, rappy-chappy take on mathsrock, their best two songs bookending an uneven but diverting set. Top marks to whoever was on the decks, too: The Telescopes' 'The Perfect Needle' and Bowie's 'Heroes' (the German language version, unless our ears deceived us), you really know how to spoil us.
Somewhere in between, we managed to shoehorn an express midsummer trip to the predictably humid Academy 3 to see Portland's The Thermals, our first chance to see them and typically it fell at a time where we for once hadn't gotten round to listening to their latest material. It mattered little, as we were too busy jumping up and down to their hilariously energetic fuzzpop/rock to be taking notes anyway. The Thermals, then: sweaty, but fun.
Apologies yet again for the slight gap in transmission. As a consequence there's something of a content jam so expect a gig review ketchup and linkdump in the next few days, as well as our annual Half-Term Report on the best albums released in the UK from January to June 2009.
In the meantime, continuing a recent (accidental) animal theme, enjoy the promo video of 'Turtle' by The Wind Whistles. Like the nature that seemingly informs their lyrical content, there's a slightly sinister undertow to the band's apparently straightforward surface, making their appeal nearer to anti-folk than twee.
If you like this, you might want to try their second album 'Animals Are People Too' which can be downloaded in full, legally, and for free*, from here. There's also whispers of a UK tour soon.
Grasses Of A Thousand Colours, Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London, Saturday May 30 2009, 3pm.
It was a blazing hot Saturday afternoon when your bustling blogger was making his way to the Royal Court Theatre in London's Sloane Square. A superficially unremarkable middle-aged man in a baseball cap came in from the opposite direction just a few steps ahead, to be swooped upon by a number of people fervently seeking his autograph. Peering up to see the source of the obstruction to our path, we recognise the slightly startled features of the playwright Wallace Shawn* looking at your curious correspondent as if he had identified his own Mark Chapman waiting in the wings. We would like to say relax, Wally, we haven't got a gun, we just wanna get in to see your play, man but we don't, finding a side door instead.
Now probably the one thing you really wouldn't want to discover on sitting down in an intimate studio (the performance is in the relatively tiny Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) at a start of a three-hour plus play on a baking hot day in late May is that the air-conditioning isn't working. If that wasn't enough to get us hot under the collar we found Miranda Richardson directly asking us if we were interested in sex, and if we weren't, to leave the theatre with immediate effect. Which is as good a way to start a play as any.
Shawn's play was about cats and mice, donkeys and rabbits, man and his best friend (and we're not referring to a dog). Cats play with mice, we're told, not because they can, but because they actively enjoy it. Parallels between cats and mice and women and men are drawn throughout the piece, with bestial-themed fantasies langorously recalled as fact rather than metaphor. It's not just sex wars that pre-occupy the piece, however, with a vomiting disease taking hold as a result of manipulations in the foodchain, and a meditation on mortality dominating the final act.
There was an enormous amount to enjoy in the performance - Shawn is a skilled orator (much of the play is in monologue) and a wonderfully mesmering wordsmith, given sterling support by the glacial presence of Miranda Richardson, Jennifer Tilly in showstopping form and physique, and a game Emily McDonnell. The play was eery and pertinent; overflowing with ideas and themes; loaded with portent and intrigue, and made good use of dramatic entrances, exits and projected film. Although some of the material might easily offend, invariably this was spoken word and there was very little graphic action on show to frighten the horses (although the sight of Miranda Richardson lapping at Mr Shawn's bald pate might not be everyone's saucer of milk).
Titillation certainly wasn't the order of the day, with the young lady next to me remarking on the humidity in the room before casually hitching her skirt up several inches providing the biggest frisson of the afternoon's entertainment (aside from Ms Tilly's devastating sideways glances and daring decolletage). It could indeed be argued that a little bit of action might have brought some life to what was a huge running length for a play that was so centred on lengthy monologues. Either that, or some prudent editing, might have reduced some of the inevitable longuers in such a structure.
Perhaps all could be forgiven if the piece was driven to a firm conclusion, but the response to these lengthy meditations on man's inevitable meddling with animals, and the dire consequences that result, seemed to be a resigned shrug, an intelligent, metaphorical hybrid of 'shit happens'. We came anticipating controversy, but not expecting the stark revelation to be the playwright's own ambivalence laid shockingly bare for all to see.
*Now if that sounds like a bit of namedropping, Mr Shawn was no stranger to this either it seemed, as he took justifiably great pleasure in informing the frankly adoring box office staff that Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys may well be dropping by if he gets time after rehearsals.
Bristol Dot-to-Dot Festival, various venues in Bristol, Saturday May 23 2009.
This was Parallax View's second visit to Bristol's Dot-to-Dot Festival, 2009 seeing some venue changes (converted prison and church respectively Fiddlers and Trinity making way for The Cooler and additional rooms at Thekla and Academy), two days now compressed into one, and much better weather (hello, sun!). Effectively the event is a glorified pub crawl with some of the globe's hottest-tipped new bands playing at every turn, so c'mon, what's not to like? Although all that relentless gigging and ligging was bound to take its toll on our critical faculties by the end of the evening (wasn't it ever thus, dear reader?).
And yet, in the beginning, there were false starts, with Official Secrets Act pulling out, and Marina and the Diamonds having the 24-carat excuse of being stuck in traffic. So it was Flashguns to the rescue to get things started with some welcome flair upstairs in the moored-boat venue that is Thekla. These four lads looked young enough to be found in your local underpass sniffin' glue, but put in a polished, professional performance that saw them search for the missing link between Arctic Monkeys, Interpol and, erm, Larrikin Love. Possibly not the most original band of all time, then, but they have enough dark energy and a knack for a tune to see them fire up the charts.
Did somebody mention fire? Because, some moopie and groovy later, we were back in the upstairs of Thekla to be suitably impressed by LoveLikeFire, fronted by the stunning Ann Yu, all blunt bangs, darkpool eyes and startling cheekbones, and an intelligent, compassionate vocal style that recalled Emily Haines. Metric are probably a good point of comparison to the San Francisco outfit, with their rock music comprising powerful surges of guitar noise complemented by fetching female vocals to tuneful, moving effect, particularly on the epic closing number which definitely had sea legs.
While waiting for friends, your confident correspondent caught sight of the delicious Ms Yu wearing a splendid pair of big sunglasses, and managed to grab a few minutes of her time outside the venue, during which she was as cool, polite and patient as anyone could hope an indie-superstar-in-waiting could be while being probed by a beaming blogger. She revealed that the new LoveLikeFire album is due for UK release in August, although our Stateside cousins may have to wait a while longer while a deal is hammered out. We predict great things for the band, and just hope Ann's pie and groovy didn't get too cool while we talked...
Having duly met up with friends, we headed over to Louisiana (the venue, not the state) to see Polly Scattergood, someone we've been following on Mitherspace for some time, but has attracted a fair amount of attention since the release of her eponymous debut in March. Polly looked terrific in a spangly dress but the set took a fair while to warm up during which some casual observers sloped off. Their loss, though, because she left her best 'til last with a devastating coda of 'Bunny Club' and 'Nitrogen Pink' snatching victory from the jaws of disaster. Downstairs, meanwhile, Liam Finn was winning over lots of friends with his feelgood folk with just enough spice in the gumbo to keep things interesting.
Had Thekla actually set sail or were the beers kicking in by this point? Or maybe it was Duchess Says rockin' the boat with their uproarious electro-funk that resembles Crystal Castles buccaneered by the anarchic spirit of The Mae Shi, the lead singer climbing the ceiling of the boat from the stage to the bar with the helping hands of a sweaty crowd to the visible jawdropping of the beer vendors.
The beers were definitely kicking in now, so where better to head than The Cooler where The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart were kings for the day? The Cooler is a pretty big venue but it was ridiculously packed, and 'Young Adult Friction' was the order of the day both on-stage and off during a lively and tuneful set. Things then descended into a bit of a blur as we rushed to The Fleece to catch the second-half of AC Newman's performance which was strong on good humour (Newman threatens to fire just about every band member at some point) and belting tunes ('The Heartbreak Rides' track of the year to date? Discuss). Then it was a swift swagger back to Thekla to see a fierce, bracing set from Baddies that supplied a needed caffeine jolt for your woozy writer at that point.
Our zigzagging path continued with a stroll back to Fleece to see The Soft Pack who we were very impressed by without the wherewithal at that point to illustrate these vibes with wise words. We think we just liked the hard, clanging sound of their guitars, and at the end of a long session of drinking/gigging, what more do you want? Nineties indie sorts My Vitriol were the following act, but we weren't really paying that much attention at this point, and we'll let you, dear reader, decide whether this was our fault, theirs, or a mutual deficiency of sorts. As for The Hold Steady, let me tell you by this point we were doing nothing of the kind...
Parallax View Health Warning: Binge Drinking is neither big nor clever, and makes clear nonsense of any aspirations towards serious rock music journalism.
PS. Thanks to VV Brown who patiently waited for your clumsy cameraman to take a picture of friends Ray and Deb either side of the stunning singer (fuck, she's tall).
PPS. Just two sightings of Big Jeff - at the front (but of course!) to The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Flashguns (the centre-stage Flashgun's double-take when he first saw him was priceless).
Bombay Bicycle Club/Tantrums, The Rainbow, Digbeth, Birmingham, Saturday April 18 2009, 8.45pm.
In the interests of fairness and accuracy we should report that we attended this gig after a steady day's drinking before and after attendance at the Hammers' valiant draw at Villa Park and thus witnessed the event through an attendant fug of post-match euphoria and stealthily enveloping stupour. So if you're looking for a detailed analysis of chord changes and other such muso musings this review isn't likely to be particularly enlightening. But we enjoyed both bands so some sort of mention of this fact should be recorded, if only to enable the dear reader to look out for the aforementioned groups next time they're in town.
Tantrums are a local Birmingham band and in fact play the This Is Tomorrow all-dayer at The Victoria tomorrow (3rd). They helped stamp out tunelessness with a set drenched in harmonies, sounding a bit Britpop here and there but with vocal stylings perhaps more in keeping with the more radio-friendly end of emo. And yet, as desperate as that reads, it somehow worked, mainly thanks to some better-than-average choons and a healthy down-to-earth attitude ensuring there was no tears before bedtime on this occasion.
Crouch End's Bombay Bicycle Club looked impossibly young for a band who've been knocking around for long enough to be one of our top tips from the beginning of 2008. If theirs has been a slow progress to the point where they're headlining gigs like this, we witnessed first-hand from our unfamiliar stage-front positioning the frenzied excitement they've started eliciting from their peer-group following.
While you couldn't argue that the (lazy acronym alert!) BBC bring anything startlingly original to the table, you can't help but admire the way they mix the ingredients with such confident dexterity they can present a finished product that still feels fresh, vibrant and feelgood. Jack Steadman has the studied cool and easy arrogance to give Alex Turner a run for his money as the bookish fresher's heart-throb of choice, with tremulous vocals that occasionally recall the likes of Brett Anderson and Peter Perrett, while the band even get away with dropping in PV's pet hate (the token laboured ska-inflected song) and just about pulling it off without looking like prats.
Aside from the singles Always Like This and Evening/Morning, our favourites on the night were Ghost and Cancel On Me, and there certainly seemed enough strength in depth to suggest their debut album (due soon, we reckon) will be an impressive calling card. Although future records seemed the last thing on the audience's mind as they lost themselves in the here and now of crowd surges and stage invasions that saw your wobbling webmaster adopt the Bristol Jeff pose of shaking his mane while steadying one hand on the sound monitor throughout. And fashion pundits wouldn't forgive us for not mentioning the drummer's top-notch shiny parka, because surface coating is important, dontcha know.
From the ashes of Million Dead, Frank Turner has carved himself a cultish solo career that could break into the mainstream with the creditcrunch-crushing wisdom that lies within 'Reasons Not To Be An Idiot'. This idiot's guide to not being a dummy is sunny enough to light up the life of the SADdest person this winter, and thus perks up Parallax View with a well-deserved Single Of The Week.
Happy New Year to all our readers, amazingly there's still a few of you out there, despite the sparsity of updates in the last few months. Unsure to what sort of degree that will change in 2009, but here's a few links to get things kickstarted and see where it takes us.
853 describes Ladytron's Velocifero (our favourite album of 2008 lest ye forget) as a damb squib, but gets most other things right reporting from the frontline of south-east London.
I Am The Crime is a cool Swedish music blog run by hot Swedish music blogger Cecilia.
Further apologies for the recent gap in transmission, but to get things moving again here's our rundown of the best albums released in the UK for the first time in 2008. We can't pretend to have heard all of the albums released in the time period, but of those we did these were the best, and in this precise order.
1. VELOCIFERO - LADYTRON 2. Stainless Style - Neon Neon 3. Santogold -Santogold 4. Fed - Plush 5. Stay Positive - The Hold Steady 6. Youth Novels - Lykke Li 7. Alas I Cannot Swim - Laura Marling 8. Hold On Now Youngster - Los Campesinos! 9. Dear Science - TV On The Radio 10. You & Me - The Walkmen 11. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes 12. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp 13. Alpinisms - School Of Seven Bells 14. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles 15. We Are Beautiful We Are Doomed - Los Campesinos! 16. Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon 17. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires 18. In Our Spacehero Suits - Those Dancing Days 19. "Couples" - The Long Blondes 20. Kensington Heights - Constantines 21. Neptune - The Duke Spirit 22. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke 23. Fortress Around My Heart - Ida Maria 24. For Emma Forever Ago - Bon Iver 25. Box Of Secrets - Blood Red Shoes 26. El Rey - The Wedding Present 27. Knowle West Boy - Tricky 28. Blood Looms and Blooms - Leila 29. Thomas Tantrum - Thomas Tantrum 30. Oceans Will Rise - The Stills 31. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 32. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT 33. Reality Check - The Teenagers 34. Chemical Chords - Stereolab 35. Waited Up 'Til It Was Light - Johnny Foreigner 36. X Marks Destination - The Whip 37. Nouns - No Age 38. HLLLH - The Mae Shi 39. Rosie and the Goldbug - Rosie and the Goldbug 40. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion
Feel free to use the comments facility below to vent your spleen or link to your own list(s).
That's The Last Time We Use The Phrase 'Honest, Guv'
Goldfrapp/Eugene McGuinness, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, Saturday October 25 2008, 8pm. Fleet Foxes, Space2, Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, Friday October 31 2008, 9pm. Aurora Plastic Monster/StRANGEtIME/The Sweethearts/Sweet Talk, 444 Club downstairs at The Sunflower Lounge, off Queensway, Birmingham, Saturday November 8 2008, 8.30pm. Neon Neon/Yo! Majesty, Glee Club, Hurst Street, Birmingham, Monday November 10 2008, 8.30pm.
Apologies for the recent gap in Parallax View transmission. To get things back started here's a whistlestop runthrough of a few gigs we've been to recently. Starting with Goldfrapp in Wolves, who were supported by Eugene McGuinness who was as personable as his songs were unremarkable, an adequate stopgap mebbe for folk awaiting the new Jeremy Warmsley album, but what's that? There's a new Jeremy Warmsley out? Ah well, Eugene, there's always reality TV. A less modest return is reaped by headliners Goldfrapp, ostensibly here to promote the lovely 'Seventh Tree' collection but mostly getting more reward live from the squelchier dance numbers from their glam stomping mid-period, although 'Caravan Girl' from their latest also travels exceptionally well.
Hallowe'en saw your feeble freak looking pale and ghastly, but we'd left our mask at home, we were just feeling ever so faint from the deadly combination of heavy coat, hot lights and a packed crowd. Bottled water and some fresh air at the back restored our spirits, along with a performance from Fleet Foxes that manage to move less through energy than through a certain transcendence. Overall, they're a bit more jammy, noodly and loquacious compared to their recorded output, but when things click they're genuinely spellbinding.
A week later, a hastily-rearranged line-up sees frequent Parallax View picks StRANGEtIME in lively, rattling form despite arriving with a cymbal short of a drumkit and brandishing some intriguing new songs. Also on the bill were Norwegian rock trio Aurora Plastic Monster who were bold, bruising and Brit-baiting, and The Sweethearts, who perhaps put more effort in their make-up and clothing than in finding genuine musical inspiration. In contrast, local teenagers Sweet Talk were raw and revelatory, with lead singer Amelia proving compulsively watchable working through her range between sex-kitten purr and death-rattle roar, providing perhaps the missing link between Poly Styrene and Courtney Love on songs like 'Pin-Up Girl'.
Two days later, Yo! Majesty nearly have us call the bar staff to get ready with the defribilators when their electronic bass threatens to jumpstart our hearts into the next lifetime. The energy doesn't let up throughout a breakneck set in which they realise their stated intention to get the crowd sweaty and stinky, giving due props to President Elect Obama and exhorting the crowd of anoraked geeks to 'Fuck Dat Shit' to surprisingly little resistance. If they'd have rocked our boat any more we'd have been overboard and swallowing fish.
Main act Neon Neon were relatively sedate, with Gruff Rhys' laconic charm and deadpan placard prompts for 'Applause' easing the audience through a near-chronological rendition of brilliant retro-futurist concept album 'Stainless Style'. Back-projected images of Raquel Welch and cameos from Har Mar Superstar and Yo! Majesty add some kinetic propulsion to the kitsch, with 'Sweat Shop' perhaps working best of all on the night.
Apologies for the gap in transmission, but what better way to return than with Parallax View pet soundsters Ladytron and their latest single from luscious fourth album Velocifero? The marvellous Mira Aroyo in particular has never looked more alluring than in the stripey promo, all adding to the sense of a Runaway success, and inevitably, Parallax View Single Of The Week.
S'pose it's about time your coughing correspondent delivers his verdict on the week's comings and goings at his beloved West Ham which saw gaffer Alan Curbishley resign after Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney were sold without his sayso.
Curbs' departure seems premature from the point of view he steered us to safety in his first season, despite a quite unprecedented injury list steadied the ship with a respectable tenth position the next, and had stewarded the teams' best start to a season for nine years this term. He's an experienced manager who can be relied on to deliver stability through dour pragmatism, but with enough knowledge of the West Ham traditions from his playing time at Upton Park to have a sense of loyalty and belonging to the club. It's sad to see him leave in such acrimonious circumstances.
And yet...Tony Cascarino was right this week when he said that Curbs had effectively alienated himself from all four stakeholders - the fans; the board; the media and the players themselves, and his position had become untenable despite some respectable results (40% win record over his tenure).
While many football fans will sympathise with a manager feeling undermined by lack of control over who comes in and out, Curbs is still unproven in terms of transfer dealings at the high end, and his own decision-making in terms of bringing in injury-prone players on ludicrously high wages makes it difficult not to agree the board have a point. Further, had he been more ruthless in shifting players out earlier in the summer the much-criticised timing of the Ferdinand and McCartney departures might have been avoided. Few fans were devastated at the prospect of losing Anton and George (both at best average Premiership performers who offer poor value to Sunderland at £14m imho) when better replacements were being mooted.
The board have shifted McCartney off the payroll for a pretty fee, and brought in a young Uruguyan international on an out-of-contract pick-up as well as a Congolese player on loan, and on the surface of things that looks pretty good business. Ferdinand's departure still leaves us six centre-backs, although minor injuries mean we'll be slightly short in that position for maybe one or two games. Crisis, what crisis?
Much will depend on who comes in to replace the boss, of course. The board appear to be looking for an experienced manager with coaching capabilities and familiarity with the continential style of management structure. Given that in modern football, the Director of Football and board make the decisions on recruitment and the players suit themselves as to whether they put in a shift or not, all that's currently required of a manager is someone to look equal parts dapper, troubled, enigmatic, pensive, inscrutable, mercurial and wise as he looks on at proceedings from the touchline before picking up his £2m payoff at the end of the season, victim of forces beyond his control. Someone who looks like The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, in fact, so step forward Roberto Donadoni as the Parallax View manager of choice. Let's hope it ain't too heavy for him.
The Parallax View pick of the best albums released in the UK for the first time between January 1 and June 30 of the year 2008. To clarify, Yeasayer's mighty 'All Hour Cymbals', which would have been a shoo-in for the Top 10, has not been included because it was released in November 2007, even though it didn't receive wider exposure until it's re-release in Spring. Similarly, new releases in July by the likes of The Hold Steady, Leila and Tricky will have to wait until December's year-end list (we're sure they're all cool about this in their own distinctive ways).
We can't pretend to have heard every single qualifying release, but of those we did, these were the best -
1. VELOCIFERO - LADYTRON 2. Santogold - Santogold 3. Stainless Style - Neon Neon 4. Youth Novels - Lykke Li 5. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles 6. Alas I Cannot Swim - Laura Marling 7. Hold On Now, Youngster - Los Campesinos! 8. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp 9. Neptune - The Duke Spirit 10. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver 11. "Couples" - The Long Blondes 12. El Rey - The Wedding Present 13. Nouns - No Age 14. Waited Up 'Til Light - Johnny Foreigner 15. Falling Off The Lavender Bridge - Lightspeed Champion 16. Reality Check - The Teenagers 17. Box Of Secrets - Blood Red Shoes 18. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 19. X Marks Destination - The Whip 20. We Started Nothing - The Ting Tings
The usual disclaimers apply. Bad luck to some decent albums by the likes of MGMT, The Mae Shi and Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan for just missing the cut. Please use the comments box for feedback, vitriol, kudos, whatever.
Nic Roeg has made his first major feature film for some years, a horror yarn based on a Fay Weldon story, starring Kelly Reilly, and re-uniting him with his Don't Look Now leading man Donald Sutherland. Initial reviews have been mixed, but bad Roeg is usually better than a lot of films made by lesser mortals at the top of their game, so perhaps best to judge for ourselves when Puffball is released in cinemas from July 18. In the meantime, here's the NOT WORKSAFE trailer to whet your appetites.
Dot-to-Dot Festival, Various venues in Bristol, Saturday May 24 2008 and Sunday May 25 2008, 2.45pm-11pm.
This is your erudite explorer's first time at Dot-to-Dot, and on only our second expedition to Brizzle itself, and special thanks are due to new city resident Alison for providing the hospitality, company, laptop access and orienteering skills as we traversed the city in search of indie-rock thrills. Bristol seems almost unfairly blessed with unusual venues, with things kicking off on a moored-boat-cum-nightclub Thekla, and other sites including a converted church (Trinity) and prison (the appropriately named Fiddlers), all adding to the sense of adventure and discovery.
All aboard the good ship Thekla, our first band of the fest were Telepathe (pronounced by the band as telepathy as if spoken in a foreign accent) who featured (running theme alert!) an androgynous lead singer who looked for all the world like a cabin boy until she opened her pipes. Technical difficulties bedevilled the New Yorkers' set, which had something of a shambolic air (the sexy drummer abandoned her instrument for most of the set), but somehow through it all, by combination of sullen cool and some beautiful, fascinating songs, they seem to just about get through it all with their allure intact.
Then caught a couple of songs by serious young men The Detachments, which was enough to make you walk the plank, so headed off to rockpub The Fleece where Dublin's Fight Like Apes turned Bristol into the Wild West for half-an-hour, striding across the bar counter and wrestling each other in the moshpit during a cathartic and hugely enjoyable set, with former Parallax View Single Of The Week 'Jake Summers' the crazed centrepiece amongst their other harder, slightly grungier material. FLA also afforded us our first encounter with Bristol's most noteworthy superfan, a tall ginger bearded fellow called Geoff/Jeff whose propulsive stage-front duracell-dancing antics were a significant ongoing feature during festivities.
Downstairs at local roots venue The Louisiana, Sid Delicious were offering some skewed, off-beat thrills, while upstairs met back up with Alison to catch some of Eugene McGuinness' more traditional folk fayre, which should offer some appeal to fans of the Norwegian troubadour Sondre Lerche. Much more to our liking was Esser back over at Thekla, who looked tetchy and preoccupied during the soundcheck, but with his band got everybody dancing with jerky, infectious, and ever-so-slightly ridiculous pop music all set to create waves everywhere if there was any justice in this world.
We should have followed Geoff/Jeff's purposeful gait towards the Fiddlers, but instead got slightly lost and so despairingly missed Southampton's Thomas Tantrum performing former Parallax View Single Of The Week 'Shake It! Shake It!' (dispatching your most famous song early in the set seems to be another emerging trend) although what remained was nevertheless impressive, albeit more conventionally rockin' than their strop-pop SOTW. Top marks too to the very pretty lead singer for taking the time to publicly thank Geoff/Jeff for his sterling dancefloor exertions, and the dishing out of the free badges afterwards.
We elected to stay in Fiddlers to catch Micachu, who've been recording with Matthew Herbert and are starting to make a noise in London. They make heavy weather of the start of the set, the singer appearing to be in the 'attitude' stage of a day's drinking, and our attention wanders to the consideration of whether the drummer is a boy or girl (the former, if you're interested). Things do improve as the set goes on, and maybe in the studio with a disciplined producer their recorded output might be worth exploring.
Sunday morning was spent trawling MySpace to identify some bands worth catching, and the day eventually took us by surprise in terms of offering an even wider array of thrills, despite getting lost in one of Bristol's less salubrious spots in search of Trinity, where we saw a couple of uninspiring bands kick the day off amidst the anti-climax of Team Waterpolo pulling out. Much better was to follow, however, with Woodbridge's Cheeky Cheeky And The Nosebleeds proving a genuine revelation back at Fiddlers, despatching urgent (East-Angular?) guitar pop with energy, enthusiasm and that raw fearlessness you get from a band that's twigged they're on the cusp of something transformative. Daft name, then, but brilliant choons, particularly the marvellous anthem 'Slow Kids'.
This inspires your adrenaline-rushed arsehole to stuff in quick snatches of bands during an intense period of shuttling between venues and a strict three-songs-and-then-you're-gone policy which we only break for Red Light Company at Fleece, because they are excellent value, because 'With Lights Off' is a majestic classic, because the lead singer looks like an even skinnier Tom Petty, but also because by this stage we're knackered. Bonus points for the ecstatic group hug afterwards, too, which seemed genuine and this gang mentality will serve them well in the music industry travails that are sure to follow.
Around RLC we also found ourselves rattled by the rush of Pack AD's butch, bruising take on modern blues in Louisiana; impressed with the colossal high-energy post-rock guitar squalls of Leicester's Maybeshewill at Fleece; smiling like a silly-'un to the giddy 80's guilty pleasures of Cornwall's Rosie and the Goldbug at Thekla and left feeling slightly cold by moody Swedes Dag for Dag back again in Louisiana.
Things were then topped off in Thekla with The Mae Shi nearly stealing the whole weekend in a suitably scurvied piratical style, their jittery, attention-deficited noise-pop keeping everybody hugely entertained. We've heard of bands canvassing their fans before, but we've never seen it quite so literally demonstrated as when the band haul a sheet of tarpaulin over the moshpit and all dive inside under it, where they find themselves, amongst others, rubbing pneumatic shoulders with the omnipresent Geoff/Jeff. All in all, a wonderfully in-tents performance, then.
Cutting Pink With Knives have the opposite effect to The Mae Shi's inclusive gestures, in one of their last ever live performances, with frightened punters scampering away for safety as the lead singer took off his shirt and attempted to bully those at the bar into the moshpit. The music was slammin' and powerful in a kind of Beestung Lips-with-the-brakes-off intensity, and although we weren't really in the mood for it, it was kind of fascinating to watch as a piece of theatre, even though the search for anything remotely resembling a melody proved a fruitless task.
Then it was back to The Fleece for our last show of the festival: Metronomy, who seemed to be trying to be Klaxons so hard it hertz, wacky light circles emblazoned on their chests, and all. They were OK, to be fair, a reasonable soundtrack to the last few drinks of the weekend, but nothing to write home about in comparison to The Red Light Company, The Mae Shi, Fight Like Apes, Cheeky Cheeky And The Nosebleeds, Esser, Rosie and The Goldbug and Thomas Tantrum, who made up my magnificent seven from this delightfully dotty weekend.
First up, Parallax View is a personal site, and the views expressed herein (unless stated otherwise) solely belong to the webmaster (see below) and do not represent the views of past, present or future employers, or that of the web hosting company.
This site shares nothing but its title with the 1974 paranoid thriller The Parallax View. This is NOT the official site for that film and the views expressed herein do not represent the views of Warren Beatty or anyone involved in producing the film. Neither does this site have any connection with the electronic group The Parallax Corporation.
What Parallax View is:
It's a weblog, updated invariably daily, with links and references to music; film; pop culture; pub culture; football (or soccer, if you will); sports; TV/Radio; modern art; sex and gossip. Preferably, all of them at the same time.
That list isn't exclusive though. This is a personal site, so I reserve the right to talk shit about anything/everything I want. Just try stop me.
This page refers on an occasional basis to adult material, and contains some use of strong language. I don't set out to offend but if you don't like it, I won't be offended if you don't come back.
About the boy
Although this is a personal site, the point of the project isn't me, it's to refer you to sites/stories/pictures/games etc. of interest. Occasionally, there will be references to my private life but this isn't a diary page. I can't stop you making assumptions about me based on the content of this page, as long as you don't mistake those assumptions for anything remotely resembling fact.
Parallax View is the work of a shadowy, mysterious character by the name of Dead Kenny. That's me. Am I really dead? Take a guess. Why use a pseudonym? I have my reasons. Let's just say that using a doppelganger allows me optimum flexibility in expressing myself.
